Homily for Solemnity of Mary Mother of God Year A 2017
Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21
Introduction
Happy New Year to you all! I am sure we are all grateful to God for
giving us another year, grateful as well for the blessings of the past year,
the moments of joy that we enjoyed privately or as a community. But if truth be told the past year brought
with it some serious challenges, the back of which I am sure we are happy to
see.
·
How can we forget the political
viciousness, divisiveness and animosity that has not been seen in this country
for a generation or two?
·
That same unrest was also seen
in rampart violence, both by and against police officers, even here close to
home.
·
On the international stage, we
had the threat of the Zika epidemic as well as a continuing refugee crisis of
unprecedented proportions.
·
And even the casual observer
must have realized that 2016 took more than its fair share of some of our
beloved celebrities.
And yet as Christians, our faith tells us
that we must look to the future, to this new year with hope. This hope is always found in Jesus
Christ. And today's Mass gives us some
concrete ways to find that hope in Jesus Christ, first in the example of the shepherds
about whom we read in the gospel and second in Mary the Mother of God, whose
feast we celebrate today ushering in a new year.
Scripture and Theology
Like all Jewish people, the shepherds were
both in despair and expectation. Their
despair, far worse than ours, was that the nation had lost God's favour by
their sin. But they clung to that
expectation that God would send them a Messiah, a Saviour.
On Christmas Day we read in the gospel that
an angel brought Good News of great joy to these shepherds, that their long-awaited
Messiah had been born. Continuing from
where we left off today's passage has the shepherds giong off to find this
new-born baby. I propose that we look to
the three verbs describing what they did, in our own search for meaning and
hope.
1.
They "went in haste to Bethlehem"
2.
"they made known the
message"
3.
They "returned, glorifying
and praising God."
And so, first the shepherds "went in haste" to Bethlehem to find
the child about whom they had been told about.
They abandoned their sheep in the fields to see God's promise of a
saviour now being fulfilled in their midst.
And indeed we heard that they found "Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger." Now with their own eyes they could see the
source of true redemption and everlasting life, this poor and helpless child
Jesus, in the hands of equally helpless parents Joseph and Mary. But they overlooked appearances and saw the fulfilment
of God's promise to send a Messiah.
Then after finding the child Jesus we heard
that the shepherds "made known the
message that had been told them."
Put simply, they went away blabbing about this good news of the angel,
the good news they had seen with their own eyes, to anybody who would listen. The news was too good to keep to
themselves. They just had to tell others
about the Saviour. Is that not what we
do when we discover something interesting, a new restaurant, a particularly
good TV show or movie, or even a good book?
We cannot hold it within ourselves, we have to share it with
others. As for the shepherds, what they had
seen, what they wanted to share, was far more valuable; they had seen the Saviour
himself!
Thirdly, the shepherds "returned, glorifying and praising God for
all they had heard and seen."
When we seek Christ and share Christ, he fills our hearts with a deep,
inner joy, which we express in praise and thanks. This is the joy that filled the shepherds, a
joy they just could not hold in. Yes,
they were still poor shepherds, but now they had something for which to praise
and thank God, that is, he had fulfilled his promise and sent them a
Messiah. Not only did they share this
Good News with others, they also praised and thanked God for it.
Christian Life
What the shepherds did on this one night,
we Christians are called to do every day of our lives.
First, they made haste to Bethlehem to find
the answer to their problems. Where do
we make haste, to find Jesus so he can take away our despair and answer our
questions? Surely we should not make
haste to social, economic and political ideologies, which, whether they are
from the right or the left, have shown themselves incapable of giving true
answers to our deepest questions: the dignity of human life and the hope of
eternal life, how to care for one another and how to care for creation. To overcome our despair and to find answers
to these questions, we must return to the Scriptures and our Catholic teaching,
in:
·
The Twelve points of doctrine
found in our Creed
·
The Ten commandments given by
God to Moses and the Hebrew people
·
The Eight Beatitudes that show
us the way to eternal life
Rather than the simplistic answers found in
sound-bites, the Bethlehem to which we must make haste is the teaching of Jesus
Christ.
And after we have found Jesus and the
answers he gives us, like the shepherds, we too must make them known to
others. But the best way to make them
known is not by regurgitating some doctrines from the catechism; we make Jesus
and his teaching known by the way we live our lives. St. Francis of Assisi, when he was teaching
his brothers about ministry said: "preach always, sometimes with
words." People should be able to know
about Jesus, just by looking at our actions.
How much respect do we have for human life, all human life? How much care do we give to others,
especially the weakest among us, as well as to God's creation? Do we live our lives with an eye towards
eternal life in heaven or are we content with this material world? If Jesus permeates every aspect of our lives,
so that when we act, it is not us, but Jesus acting in us, then our actions
will make know to others the Good News of Christmas, that Jesus is born among
us.
Thirdly, we must like the shepherds complete
our search by glorifying and praising God, especially in the Seven Sacraments. Our celebration of Mass, baptism, confirmation,
confession cannot simply be perfunctory, fulfilling an obligation. What we do at prayer must be a sincere response
of the joy we have in receiving the Good News of Christ's birth.
And so there we have it; the shepherds
provide three ingredients for a hope and joy-filled Christian life: knowing
Jesus the source of salvation, sharing what we know with others by our actions,
and worshipping God in praise and thanks.
Conclusion
Mary, whose Blessed
Motherhood we celebrate today adds one more ingredient to this recipe. The gospel passage told us that after seeing
what the shepherds did and said, "Mary
kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart." While the shepherds provide us with active
things to do, Mary gives us an interior disposition with which to do them. She paid attention to what was happening
around her, she trusted God, despite not fully understanding what was going on
around her and she never stopped reflecting on this Good News.
May we like Mary,
spend this new year, always being aware of God's love for us, an awareness that
will inspire us to live in faith, hope and love.
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